The exploration, development and completion of an oil or gas field requires numerous pieces of oilfield equipment, such as but not limited to casing, drill pipe, packers, oilfield valves and other equipment. The cost of this equipment is relatively high. Accordingly, it is desirable to optimally use and/or reuse many pieces of oilfield equipment for subsequent drilling and development operations. However, equipment undergoes considerable stress during drilling and completion operations. For example, pieces of oilfield equipment, such as drill pipe, may suffer from material fatigue which may ultimately result in failure of the drill pipe. The failure of downhole equipment will require a suspension of drilling operations to recover the remainder of the drill string and other related equipment. It will be appreciated that the recovery of a drill string can be an expensive and time-consuming operation, which should be avoided, if possible. Accordingly, it is desirable to maintain complete service records relating to various pieces of oilfield equipment, such as, but not limited to, drill pipe, for the purposes of determining fatigue and other factors relating to the use of the equipment. By maintaining an accurate, detailed record of the use, inspections, repair and maintenance for each piece of oilfield equipment, the fatigue and other factors relating to the use of the piece of oilfield equipment can be monitored. Thus, the piece of oilfield equipment can be taken out of use before such piece of oilfield equipment fails.
It is to such a method and apparatus for accurately maintaining service records for various pieces of oilfield equipment that the present invention is directed.
The present invention is an oilfield equipment identifying apparatus for tracking selected parameters for each of a plurality of pieces of oilfield equipment adapted to be inserted into a drill string supported by a drilling rig. The drilling rig supports a drilling device, which selectively rotates the drill string, or a drill bit connected to the drill string. The apparatus comprises a computer loaded with an oilfield equipment database. A reader is provided for inputting into the computer a unique identification code for each piece of oilfield equipment added to the drill string so as to build a grid including a reference to each piece of oilfield equipment in the drill string.
The computer further includes a pipe utilization and identification program and associated hardware for continuously and automatically monitoring the location in the drill string of each piece of oilfield equipment identified in the grid and the cumulative rotating usage and non-rotating usage of each piece of oilfield equipment identified in the grid so as to provide an accurate representation of the historical data for the user to calculate the fatigue of each piece of oilfield equipment identified in the grid.
Real time reports can be generated from the pipe utilization and identification program at any time by actuating a string report function so that rig personnel can monitor the usage of each piece in the drill string and take appropriate corrective action before a costly unexpected event occurs. As will be understood by those skilled in the art, the automatic updating of the cumulative rotating usage and non-rotating usage provides an accurate record of the rotating and non-rotating hours of each piece, thereby substantially reducing the number of costly inspections needed for determining the level of fatigue of each piece.
In other embodiments, various assemblies are provided to enhance the reliability of the pipe utilization and identification program. For example, in one embodiment, the oilfield equipment identifying apparatus includes a fixed mount reader. The fixed mount reader is mounted on the rig floor in a fixed position so that it is possible for the fixed mount reader to read an identification tag included in an identifier assembly mounted onto respective pieces of oilfield equipment without any manual intervention. Thus, the fixed mount reader makes the reading of the identification assemblies more reliable and safe.
In addition, various mounting assemblies for efficiently, reliably and inexpensively attaching the identification assemblies to the pieces of oilfield equipment are disclosed.
Other advantages, and features of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art when the following detailed description is read in conjunction with the attached drawings and the appended claims.